Sunday, January 10, 2016

Ees not jure job...?

With regard to an adroitly cheeky attempt by Reza Aslan to play the race card up his sleeve by suggesting a remake of the 70s classic television show All In the Family (whose whole premise was a satire of a typical white American racist, "Archie Bunker") -- in which now instead of blacks and other racial minorities being the subject of ignorant prejudice, it will be the New Black and the New Jew, Muslims -- Spencer dispatched Aslan's nonsense in fine form. Spencer never fails to deal well with the "Good Cops" like Aslan, but he exhibits poor if not failing grades with regard to the subtler, Better Cops.

Case in point, Zuhdi Jasser, one of the better "Better Cops" (better than Reza Aslan's
"Good Cop" routine seen through so easily by Spencer) -- whose
"heart is in the right place" -- so Spencer says, preposterously, in this recent video talk.

Spencer
never would have even brought it up, had it not been for an audience
member who is curious enough about her question to ask Spencer, and to
press him by reiterating her point when he seems to skirt off point
(though she is oh so polite in doing so).

At 1:05:36 of the videotape, referring to the infamous verse of Koran 9:111:

"I'm
curious to know... 'those of us who kill and are killed in the name of
Allah go straight to Paradise' -- how do so-called moderates like Zuhdi
Jasser _______ -- I just don't, I can't understand that!"

(The
blank is a word I can't make out, but it's clear what she must be
saying; at any rate, Spencer helpfully clarifies her question for the
audience:)

"How does Zuhdi Jasser read the Koran saying that
Paradise is guaranteed to those who kill and are killed for Allah, and
not think there's something wrong here -- is that a fair summation?"

And the woman in the audience agrees -- "Yeah, right!"

However,
something odd goes on in the videotape. At 1:06:02, while Spencer is
drinking from his water bottle, there's an obvious editing splice in the
tape, meaning something was cut out. Since this video is from
"JihadWatchVideo" recording an event for the group Spencer is affiliated
with, "ACT for America", we may reasonably surmise that Spencer himself
had a few seconds edited out, right at the point where he's
discussing the problem of Zuhdi Jasser with that female audience member
-- it's a problem for her, at any rate, not for Spencer, apparently; for
right after the seeming edit splice in the tape, he says:

" --
look, I don't really want to talk about Zuhdi Jasser because he's a good
guy... and I don't doubt that Zuhdi Jasser's heart is in the right
place..."

Perhaps that odd edit splice represents a gap in time during which Spencer could not help himself and said some unkind words about
Jasser, then before airing time on YouTube, decided to have those seconds scrubbed (thanks to reader GodlessKafir for catching this detail on the video).

This reflects a curious (and serious) dereliction of civic duty in
Spencer. I mean, for crissakes, his whole career involves analyzing the
problem of Islam, and he can't take time out to probe the problem of the
pseudo-reformers like Zuhdi Jasser, Maajid Nawaz, Asra Nomani, and
Irshad Manji (to name the most prominent and conspicuously busy out
there) who are exercising their sly taqiyya to fool not only the mainstream but also as "Better Cops" go further to fool many in the Counter-Jihad? But instead when he examines this most important subtopic of the overall
problem of Islam Spencer only fixates on the obvious Good Cops like Reza
Aslan?

That's like a janitor who dutifully takes out the trash, but neglects to clean the toilets.

Thanks! I went to an atheist forum featuring the Ex-Muslims of North America on Sunday. I will leave detailed notes about my impressions on this site in the next couple of days. It will be quite informative as to the dire state of cognitive dissonance in atheists and ex-Muslims.

Egghead, fully agree w/ this. Bottom line here is that all Atheists are not created equal, and 'Christian Atheists' are very different from 'Muslim Atheists' or 'Jewish Atheists' or 'Hindu Atheists'. I have run into the arguments about Atheism being an alternative to Muslims, and I usually don't buy it for one major reason.

While people may well believe in the non existence of a deity, there will often by times when they would change their mind. And guess what - once they do, they're more likely than not to revert to whatever their families used to believe - whether it's Christianity, Islam, Judaism, whatever. Some of that can be seen in the ex Soviet stans - people who were kept Atheist for 70 years, but have been undergoing an Islamic awakening since their countries became independent.

Using a physics analogy on equilibrium, Atheists and Agnostics are on the unstable and neutral equilibriums, while Theists are in a stable equilibrium. Just as the natural state of things tends to a stable equilibrium, similarly, there is always a window of people switching. If Islam is one of the variables people can switch to, that is what endangers the Rest

One friend who identified (identifies?) as atheist also believes that she 'felt' the spirit of her father in his/her house AFTER her father died. I asked her how this would be possible without an afterlife? Without God 'making' the afterlife? She did concede my point when I made it to her. So, atheists often have muddled ideas about their own spiritual situations.

As promised, here are my observations about a recent atheist forum featuring the Ex-Muslims of North America (with one white male moderator and one female ex-Muslim moderator asking questions, two white male speakers, and one young adult male ex-Muslim and one young adult female ex-Muslim):

1. The meeting started with a general deconstruction of all religion. The white male moderator presented examples that included a) God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (which one human sacrifice did NOT occur but was presented as God being very malicious), b) witch trials, c) Aztecs making human sacrifices (which many human sacrifices did ACTUALLY occur and were quite earnestly explained as Aztecs having 'no ill will' to the victims in the process of cutting out their hearts for their God [as if the commentator had personally been there to discern intent of these 'brown' peoples]). The Aztec illustration used can be found on this wiki site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture

2. The white male moderator and one guest speaker spent quite a bit of time presenting that people who believe in God really just project their personal values on their God. Their God is just a mirror of them.

3. After God and other religions and believers had been criticized, the conversation finally turned to Islam - starting with the Mohammed cartoons. The moderator showed a Charlie Hebdo cartoon of the Holy Ghost homosexually raping Jesus who was homosexually raping God the Father and then asked who was offended by the cartoon? and further who would be willing to kill someone over the cartoon? His conclusion was that we are at the point where Muslims ARE willing to kill over cartoons. The male ex-Muslim thoroughly and accurately summarized the history of the Mohammad cartoon controversy, but the cartoon content was NOT described - and the cartoons were NOT shown.